Individual product teams at Microsoft work on the innovation and development of new and existing products, and while they use methods aligned to the wider user-centric design process, the groups have a degree of autonomy when it comes to the specific methods they use.
Erez Kikin Gil, Product Design Lead for the Windows Live Web Communications product team, described a user experience design process which the team follows to meet the specific needs of their target users and to best fit their individual product development environments.
In this case, the web communications user experience team for Windows Live, which is comprised of designers, user researchers, and technical writers, follows a four-phase process while developing individual elements of their products.
The process involves four phases: Understand, Ideate, Test and Communicate.
What is the challenge that needs to be addressed? The answer to this question is sourced from marketing, product planners, market research, ethnographic user research, and design research. The trigger is always user needs.
This involves broad visioning, sketching, and building scenarios (such as ‘a day in the life of a user’, envisioning the impact of a design change on the user, and so on). Kikin Gil emphasises that everyone is a designer at this stage of development, including researchers, developers and product executives. During ideation, it is common for the web communications design team to hold internal participatory design sessions, asking the product team members to imagine themselves in particular users’ situations and designing products to meet those needs. User input is also critical during this stage, with researchers employing creative methodologies such as participatory design activities and story-book exercises to help users brainstorm new ideas and imagine themselves using the products in new ways to solve existing problems.
User research sessions are conducted throughout ideation and product development, using a combination of observation, participation, videos, listening and viewing. All research is conducted either in-house or in the field,, in the users’ natural environment. Microsoft sites have purpose-built studios equipped to carry out such research to the highest standard, including living room set-ups for example. Researchers employ a variety of methodologies to ensure the concepts from ideation will meet users’ specific needs and desires, such as comparison studies, benchmarks, and product usability. Some projects may go back to ideation at this stage, depending on user perceptions and reactions.
The results are always communicated back to the stakeholders of the project. This is done through both informal and formal channels such as project meetings and intranets. There is no internal limit to who can view the results.